Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Steampunk Granny's Review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

I love my grandchildren and this year, as a high school graduation present, my granddaughter
Kathryn Gilbert came out to visit my husband and me. She also had time to visit with
some of her cousins. Kathryn comes from a very small town in Wyoming. She was
in for a cultural shock. While she tends to be quiet, we on the East Coast are
anything but. As an extra treat, my youngest grandson, Nathan, was also able to
spend the week with us because his parents were visiting their oldest son, Jimmy, who is a Marine.

At the Franklin Institute with Katrina, Kathryn, Nathan and Granny

We were able to spend some time with my granddaughter
Katrina before she left on her own vacation to Arizona. What I enjoyed most
about Kathryn’s visit was that we had a chance to talk about our writing. Kathryn will be going to college with hopes of teaching English in school and Kathryn,
like Katrina and I, is a writer. She plans to one day publish the book
she’s been working on. I asked Kathryn if she would like to do a review with me
about a film we saw this past week, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. She said
yes. This is part one of a two part post and we’ll begin with my take of the
film.

Planet of
the Apes

If you’re my
age, you’ve probably seen the original 1968 film, Planet of the Apes, starring
Charlton Heston as George Taylor the American astronaut who with his crew
crash landed on a strange planet after spending thousands of years in
hibernation. The film which is based on Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel, La Planete
des Singes, introduced moviegoers to intelligent gorillas and speechless,
animalistic humans.

The film’s
ending, along with Taylor’s shocking realization of his true location, is
seared forever in my mind and I became an instant fan. Unfortunately, I found most
of the sequels to Planet of the Apes a big disappointment, but at the time I
wasn’t sure why. It was only after watching the 2011 Rise of the Planet of the
Apes and this year’s blockbuster, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes that I
understood what was missing from the earlier films.

Rise of the
Planet of the Apes

To give my
thoughts on The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, I do need to mention the 2011
film The Rise of the Planet of the Apes which was directed by Rupert Wyatt and
starred James Franco as Will Rodman and Andy Serkis as Caesar. The 2011 film
did what all the previous films in the franchise did not do. It allowed the
movie audience to become one with an intelligent species that is endangered in
the real world. Will Rodman (Franco) a
scientist from the Sen-Sys Biotech Company is working on a cure for Alzheimer’s
disease, a disease that his father is victim to…but we all know that the plans
of mice and men often go astray.

The company
does its research on chimpanzee subjects and the drug ALZ-112 makes one of the
chimps, Bright Eyes, extremely intelligent, but she goes on a rampage. Due to this
mishap, Will is forced to take her infant and raise it. Infant Caesar grows
more intelligent each day, but he still has animal tendencies that Will Rodman
must deal with. The drug may be a blessing for the primate characters of the
film, but its side effect on humans is catastrophic. While the airborne disease
becomes a pandemic nightmare for mankind, Caesar and his fellow intelligent
chimpanzee friends escape to Muir Woods; their new home. Dawn of the Planet of
the Apes changed the game plan on the franchise by telling the story from a new
perspective. We began to identify with Caesar. He was the hero of the film; the
survivor against man’s cruelty towards non-humans.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The 2014
film directed by Matt Reeves and starring Andy Serkis as Caesar, Jason Clarke
as Malcolm, Gary Oldman as Drefus and Toby Kibbell a bonobo and Caesar’s second
in command, focused on the lives of the primates living in Muir Woods. Have you’ve ever truly looked into a primate’s
eyes. I do whenever I am at the zoo or when watching all the National
Geographic documentaries about the dire conditions of a species, be they
Chimpanzee, Bonobo or Gorilla. There is intelligence in those eyes and before
we split off from our cousins millions of years ago, we were just like them and
we have the DNA to prove it ranging between a 95 to 99% similarity.

In the 2014
film we see Caesar in charge of his troop of fellow primates.They’ve not only built shelter for
themselves, but they successfully hunt for food. When Drefus (Oldman) the leader
of a small band of human survivors living in a section of San Francesco sends
Malcolm and his team to check for a source of water power to keep their city
running, they encounter Caesar’s son, Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston) and Rocket’s
son, Ash (Doc Shaw). Ash is injured.

The film
deals with Caesar and Malcolm trying to keep peace between the two species, but
mistakes are made by both sides and it’s not only the humans who thirst for
supremacy; stupid choices are made by both men and beast alike.

Conclusion

Humans have
this false illusion that we are above nature. It is because of this mistaken
belief that our oceans are polluted; our air dirty and species around the globe
go extinct at an alarming rate. We forget that the havoc we cause to nature
will eventually come back to kick us in the butt. If we don’t respect nature
and the other life forms that share this planet with us, then we are doomed.

When you look into the eyes of any animal, you
see a comrade that has survived, like us, the evolutionary trip through time.
They deserve our respect. See the movie. We are witness to an old story told
through new eyes and it feels right.

Kathryn Gilbert’s
review of the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will be posted here on my blog next week.

5 comments:

My whole family has seen Dawn of the Planet of the Apes except me! Can you believe it? And it's one of my all-time favorite series. I have yet to miss a Planet of the Apes movie. But, alas, I might have to miss this one in the theater due to time constraints, but we shall see. Great write-up, Marie!

Eschewing a tidy wrap-up, Reeves doesn't leave us feeling manipulated, as so often happens in films like this. Instead, we want to know where the story goes from here, and that's no small accomplishment.

Eschewing a tidy wrap-up, Reeves doesn't leave us feeling manipulated, as so often happens in films like this. Instead, we want to know where the story goes from here, and that's no small accomplishment.